Nicolas Sarkozy holds out little hope of new dawn in UK relations

Nicolas Sarkozy holds out little hope of improving French relations with
Britain under the new coalition government.

By Henry Samuel in Paris

6:35PM BST 12 May 2010

A senior member of his centre-Right party told The Daily Telegraph the president lost patience with UK under Gordon Brown and had no intention of trying to forge deeper ties with David Cameron.

The source said: "More than any other French leader, Mr Sarkozy relies on building close personal ties to forge political partnerships.

"This he honestly tried to do with Gordon Brown at the beginning of his presidency in 2007 – he would now say naively as the rapprochement didn't really happen and the chemistry wasn't there."

As a result, Mr Sarkozy has given more weight to the traditional Franco-German axis that has been the cornerstone of European politics for decades.

Now the president has a "once bitten, twice shy" attitude to British leaders, the senior right-wing MP claimed. "He's not even going to bother to try with Cameron," he said.

His comments came as Downing Street announced Mr Sarkozy would be the first foreign leader to meet Mr Cameron when he comes to London to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's famous Appeal of June 18, 1940.

The pair discussed the meeting yesterday, but there was already a small disagreement as both claimed the other had put in the call.

Mr Sarkozy has rarely met the new prime minister and is known to be disappointed that he pulled the Conservatives out of the European People's Party, the main right-wing grouping in the European Parliament, to join forces with more Eurosceptic parties.

His secretary of state for Europe, Pierre Lellouche recently described the Conservatives' pledge to reclaim powers from Europe as "pathetic" and "autistic", before claiming he had been mistranslated.

But last week, Mr Sarkozy told right-wing MPs that he was unconcerned about Mr Cameron's Euroscepticism.

"If Cameron wins, he'll do like the others," said the President. "He'll start out anti-European and he'll finish pro-European. That's the rule'".

In an Elysée statement yesterday, he clearly sought to prod him in that direction: "The President hopes that the United Kingdom and France, partners in the European project in which their common future is at stake, will continue to bring their contribution to the progress of European construction."

The mention of a "contribution" appeared to refer to Britain's refusal to support a massive bail-out of euro this week following Greece's financial woes.